Social learning tools are tools used for pedagogical and androgogical purposes that utilize social software and/or social media in order to facilitate learning through interactions between people and systems. The idea of setting up "social learning tools" is to make education more convenient and widespread. It also permits an interaction between users and/or the software which can bring a different aspect to learning . People can acquire knowledge by distance learning tools, for instance, Facebook, Twitter, Khan Academy and so on. Social learning tools may mediate in formal or informal learning environments to help create connections between learners, instructors and information.These connections form dynamic knowledge networks. Social learning tools are used in schools for teaching/learning and in businesses for training. Within a school environment, the use of social learning tools can have an impact on not only the user (student) but his/her caretaker as well as the his/her instructor. It brings a different approach to the traditional way of learning which affects the student and his/her support circle. Companies also use social learning tools. They used them to improve knowledge transfer within departments and across teams. Businesses use a variety of these tools to create a social learning environment. They are also used in company settings to help improve team work, problem solving, and performance in stressful situations.
Social learning tools are used for people who are willing to share their good ideas/thoughts with someone else. The ideas can be related to either the academic studies or any other daily skills that we want to share with others. Social learning tools connect learning to our daily lives. It creates a learning environment more truthful to today's society. There are a couple of common elements that should to be present in a social learning tool. Technology should be involved to allow physical and cognitive learning. There should be interactions between the people who use the tool and interactions with the software. Another element is trust. Users should trust the software and what other people created.
Video Social learning tools
Frequently Used Social Learning Tools
Social networking such as Facebook, has been ranked as the top 100 examples of learning tools that people use most frequently. The director of Customer Support for Articulate, Gabe Anderson said that he uses Facebook to check any updated information that are happening nearby. And by clicking the link that people share on their Facebook page, he is able to seeing how his friends feel about the information and what the opinions are. Furthermore, an instructional designer, Pennsylvania said that what learners on Facebook do are just to create an account with a profile. Right afterward, people find someone who are also fascinated in what they are interested in and share different ideas through Facebook. As an example of the use of Facebook, if the teacher manages a classroom page viewed by students and parents, they can post homework assignments-both students and parents know what is expected for the next class (reducing excuse-making for students); share updates, changes, humorous stories, etc; increase the feel of community in classroom; and increase communication between teachers and parents.
Twitter, a free social online networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and receive messages of up to 140 characters. It is funded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone. Media outlets in particular use Twitter as a way to broadcast breaking news. Therefore, people use Twitter as one way to know the updated information about the society. As an example, of the use of Twitter, if the teacher manages a classroom account received by parents and students, they can post reminders for test, assignment due, field trips, conferences, supplies needed; post lesson recaps; answer homework questions; connect students to other classmates and the teacher; and increase communication between teachers and parents. As teaching ideas, the teacher can have students tweet their teacher what they learned that day in class in 140 characters or less, or they can create class discussions over Twitter-studies show that engagement increased more than twice as much for students that were asked to contribute to class discussions and complete assignments using Twitter over a semester, than those students that were not.
Pinterest is a web and mobile application company that operates a software system designed to discover information on the World Wide Web, mainly using images and on a shorter scale, GIFs and videos. For the use of Pinterest in schools, for example, the teacher can manage a classroom account viewed by parents and students to show and tell for teachers and students to parents and to pin students' work and classroom projects.
Blogger
Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. For the use of Blogger in schools, for example, the teacher can moderate a classroom blog written by students and read by teachers, students and parents in order for the students to practice writing (writing a blog requires students to map out their thought and express themselves); for the students to conduct broader application beyond a writing assignment for the teacher (writings to be read by parents and classmates); for everyone to create a community feeling by providing a record of the year. As teaching ideas, most interesting essay or submission on the weekly topic can have the students' work published on the classroom blog (giving a sense of achievement and inspire hard work for the future reward of online application); or the teacher can create a friendly competition between classes for the best essay or paper.
Skype
Skype is a telecommunications application software product that specializes in providing video chat and voice calls between computers, tablets, mobile devices, the Xbox One console, and smartwatches via the Internet and to regular telephones.[9] This popular, widely known platform provides for group meetings tools that can be particularly effective for remote participants to come together. For example, if you're thinking about collaborating with a remote classroom, Skype can be huge asset in doing so. Skype is also great from bringing students who might be stuck at home due to illness or other situations into the classroom to join the class for a collaborative dialogue or other activity.
Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts is a communication platform developed by Google which includes instant messaging, video chat, SMS and VOIP features. Google Hangouts in becoming an increasingly popular alternative to Skype for bringing remote groups of people to together to communicate and collaborate. A couple advantages Google Hangouts has is the potential to have a Hangout recorded, and the fact that you are less likely to have the occasional availability issue that the free version of Skype can have. Combine Google Hangouts and Google Drive or other similar tools and you can collaboratively edit content while you're "hanging out"!
Maps Social learning tools
Types of environments
Social learning tools environments can help create connections between learners, teachers and knowledge that we are going to acquire. The environment can be either formal or informal.
- Formal learning, which means that the process of acquiring knowledge happens within a school, college, institute or university. Lecturers in the University of College London use Moodle page to post the latest information to students, e.g. courseware they used during the lecture, coursework, quizzes, and forums. Students can both preview and review for what teachers talked at any time they want.
- Informal learning, which means that people get the information inadvertently and it usually happens in our daily life. The informal learning environment mostly happens during the conversation between people, and also the enlargement and exploration of personal experience. A host of circumstances are considered as the informal learning environments.
Another example of informal learning environment is social media, e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Television channels and so on. There are a lot of Foods & Delights TV Channels teaching people who are interesting in cooking, the chief mostly starts with showing audiences what kind of ingredients they need, the level of optimal fire they should use and how to makes it more attractive by adding some sauce. People learn how to cook dishes at any time, any places they want, what they need is just opening the television or opening the web page to watch the live broadcast.
A historical review of educational programming in Finland was provided by Aarreniemi-Jokipelto in 2006, as what the reports mentioned, the educational TV in Finland runs almost parallel to that of US, the reason for such a devastating development of taking TV as a learning tool is the wish to educate students at home. Moreover, play, the key word for describing informal learning environment. An ITV game called Winky Dink, every time when the characters in the game need some help, kids will be asked to use their crayons to draw on the electrical screen, and give assistance to the character. So the game ensures that kids do enjoy themselves and learn new things which they draw when they are watching and helping Winky-dinky in his adventures.
Effectiveness
1.Convenience
Social learning tools provide people a platform to utilize "distance education", people can no longer spend too much time on transportation in order to learn in somewhere. They don't need to be face-to-face communicate with teachers anymore. For the business, they can use the internet or some particular technological systems to improve knowledge transfer within departments and across teams. It can encourage communication and the exchange of knowledge and ideas throughout the department, with the introduction of social learning tools.
What's more, they can use the social learning tools, e.g. Yammer to share their working experience with others, they can also discussing the project process by posting their ideas on the forum. They don't necessarily to have a meeting which makes their working more convenience.
2. Cost-efficient, save money
People can use social learning tools to gain information they want. For example, people who watch "MasterChef" learn how to cook dishes without paying anything. They don't need to go and have training in the Food Institute, which help them to cut their daily budgets.
Another example is that students who want to get a higher mark in IELTS examination or SAT need to memorize many new vocabulary words. What those online learning apps do is to teach them different ways for memorizing the words they are unfamiliar with.
3. Promote commerce
If the business creates a forum for customers to write their feedbacks, they can have more ideas about how to improve their products, which helps the company to create better marketing strategies
4. Students in the TV learning education environment achieve better learning performance than their counterparts in the traditional environment
Social learning tools have some special functions, such as computer self-efficacy, which means that the people can designate different types of performance according to their capabilities and choose different ways to learn things on computer according to their personal demand. Students can learn at different steps and different speed according to their personal understanding and learning capability.
Drawbacks
- Instructors or teachers may need to spend a long time on learning how to teach electronically
A survey pointed out that the misusing or poor usage of the computer technology and apply it into the curricula can let the students down, because teachers have to spend a long time in figuring out which type of social learning tools would be most adaptable for their courses and how to achieve their goals by using these tools.
- Increase the rate of plagiarism in students' coursework
Students tend to finish their coursework with the help of social learning tools, e.g. internet, TV and so on. Whatever the teachers like it or nor, accept it or not, students all make reference on the internet and make use of it for their academic coursework. They think and considerate the problem by simply typing on the keyboard or opening the television, instead of thinking the problem deeply in mind. Day by day, their brains will be liked a machine which is run out off the power and work slowly. They will be adapted with the situation and become much more lazy than before.
- Purchase of multimedia equipment and some facilities may be necessary
There are constantly changes on using different kinds of social learning tools due to different courses require different tools, colleges or individual have to pay a lot for different charged learning tools.
- Lack of face-to-face interaction
People prefer to communicate through these social learning tools, e.g. Facebook, Skype. They spend much more time on online learning with the help of social learning tools and ask friends by using Skype or other social media tools if they have some problems. They don't need to gathering together anymore if they have already adapted by using these tools to communicate and share their opinions.
See also
- Social learning (social pedagogy)
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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